The US continues to perpetuate the stereotype that Americans are stupid. There is always a truth in a stereotype. While I know many intelligent Americans I wonder at the great gobbets of them who have such a bigoted and kneejerk reaction as to stop using their faculties for reasoning, deduction and fairness. No political system is perfect and really, democracy only works with 100 people or less (in my opinion) before its edges get a little rough.

Nine years after 9/11 and the stupidity seems to be mounting, not lessening. Certain small-minded, fear-laden people are equating the building of a mosque near ground zero with terrorism and other silly notions. They’ve used such rabid comments even in their Republican and Tea Party campaigns. What comments? Oh, let’s see, equating a Muslim to a terrorist, showing a picture of a nearly stereotypical turban-wearing man as a terrorist, calling candidates of Lebanese descent (and Christian) as being Arab. The amount of ignorance, fear mongering and bigotry is astounding.

Now, not all republicans are bad, or so right wing that they can only see sideways, but this attitude that everyone of the Muslim faith is a jihadist terrorist is outright ridiculous and dangerous. Why dangerous? Well if someone kept calling me a terrorist or some other nasty phrase when I was not I would tend to be less forgiving of anything they did and maybe just maybe would decide that if I was already branded then I may as well play the part. The best way to show the idiocy of such allegations and get sense into the thickening skulls of such people is to give a comparison. If all terrorists are Muslim and therefore all Muslims are terrorists, then all Klu Klux Klan members are Christian and all Christians are KKK. And what is KKK but a terrorist group too? Well, you say, that’s only KKK and they’re a freakish group but not the same as terrorists. Still, the overt labeling is dangerous and inaccurate.

If a man has an obsession with eating pickles and then kills someone, is it because of the pickles or the man? If someone reads a murder mystery and decides to commit a crime that might just resemble that story, is it the story’s fault or the person’s. Responsibility and choices lie with the individual and very few groups all think the same. I talk specifically of religious groups. There are orthodox and non-orthodox, liberal and conservative aspects to most religious paths, as well as branches and branches. Look at Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Muslim faiths. There are many varieties on the theme.

The mosque in New York would be like mosques everywhere else. They have not said that the mosque’s agenda is to teach terrorism and it’s retarded (how can you tell that this makes me angry) to believe that’s the mandate. I know several Muslims who are quiet about their faith, like many Christians or Jews. Here’s another question: should a religion move into another country and plant its religion doing missionary work and pushing its faith on the people who have other traditions. Think of all those early Christian missionaries and the ones today, going all over the world to do “good works” but in the process trying to convert people. In the past that conversion was often accompanied my abuse and murder.

I’m not that astounded that people are so biased as to not see clearly and whine about the mosque in New York. But I am astounded at some of the campaigns going around with outright racism and bigotry in their messages. Like you can run a country on denouncing terrorists and prejudicing people against those who are innocent. Can anyone say Hitler? I don’t expect any American to read this who thinks there should be no mosque at ground zero. What would be best of all would be a temple/church/altar of every faith in a circle at ground zero. Now that would show that perhaps the faiths can come together and let everyone be, in peace.

Well it wasn’t Muslims per se, it was men who we think were Muslims but that doesn’t make all Muslims bad, does it? Tarring one group with one brush is pretty unfair and is in fact bigoted. In Vancouver they have a take back the night walk (or used to) to demonstrate against violence against women, but they wouldn’t let any men walk in that, thereby indicating that all men are violent against women. I would never participate in that either for the same whitewashing of hatred.

There is a churches and a mosques in Jerusalem. When christian crusaders sacked the city they killed everybody there. Everybody – muslims, jews, zaraostrians and christians. Yes, there were quite a lot of christians in the city population. So there were no muslims in the city who could have been offended by the thought of building more churches to it.

People are offended by the idea of building a church in New York, but what are they offended about? It is only when they start to explain the actual reasons for being offended that the racism and bigotry comes up.

Where there no muslims killed in the 9/11 attack? Well, hundreds of thousands of muslims have been killed after that attack and almost as a direct result of it. Almost any of these people did not have nothing to do with the men who committed the terrorist act. The war on terror that the US is having in the Middle-East has not made US citizens safer, but created a new wave of terrorism and fear. Who is more likely to turn into terrorism, than a person who has lost all due to a war? Most often as collateral damage.

Algerian freedom fighter was once asked by the french press, why do you use suitcase bombs and terrorist techniques? He answered, that they would use bombers if they had any, to drive the french out of their country. The french had to leave Algeria to its own devices eventually. US needs to wake up. It has taken the third world as its colonial empire like the colonial European counries once did, and is now being driven out just as they once were.

The only way to solve the terrorism problem is to be more tolerant to other people. You can not stop terrorism by bombing other people. For terrorism is a direct result of bigotry.